Yesterday, I shared my State of Drupal presentation at DrupalCon Vienna. In addition to sharing my slides, I wanted to provide some more detail on how Drupal is evolving, who Drupal is for, and what I believe we should focus on.

Decoupled applications are increasing in popularity as brand experiences continue to move beyond the traditional website. Although your content management system (CMS) might house your content alongside Drupal, it doesn’t just stay put. APIs are making calls to extend that content to things like digital signage, kiosks, mobile … really, the sky’s the limit (as long as there’s an API).

Decoupled Drupal seems to be taking the world by storm. I'm currently in Sydney, and everyone I talked to so far, including the attendees at the Sydney Drupal User Group, is looking into decoupled Drupal. Digital agencies are experimenting with it on more projects, and there is even a new Decoupled Dev Days conference dedicated to the topic.

Here in Acquia Learning Services we just completed our first session of the Drupal 8 Developer Immersion Course w/ Certification prep – it was a great success!

Led by teacher Dallas Ramsden, 15 brave souls dug into D8 all summer with project-based learning and weekly virtual classrooms. The course just wrapped and students are already passing the D8 Developer exam.

The mere mention of website templates makes some clients bristle. Nobody likes being told they have to conform to a set of rules they feel weren’t written with them in mind. They also believe that their site will look like everyone else’s and not meet their unique needs.

Let’s start by dispelling that myth: that using templates means your site will look like everyone else’s.